I Got This Feelin’ and It’s Back Again

Before leaving on a trip, I get a bit manic. I can’t seem to leave well enough alone. I create unnecessary errands to run, assuming that it’s worth going out of my way now in order to have a more relaxing trip. Now that we’re a mere week away from leaving for Italy, my mania is kicking in.

My craziness is disguised initially as normal trip preparation. I’ll start to looking at what to pack and decide that my shoes could be more comfortable. It’s not until I’m suddenly heading all over town looking for just the right pair and reading Zappos reviews that I realized that this is not rational. My shoes are fine.

Of course, after deciding my shoes are OK, I’ll find something else that’s just not quite right. My bag, for example. How much can it really hold? And is it truly secure? Eventually I’m poking around online and dropping by stores on my lunch break in search of a larger, more heavily zippered alternative.

The reality is that my shoes and my bag are just fine; it’s my mind that’s the problem.

It becomes truly apparent that I have gone off the deep end when I start fixating on things that aren’t related to the trip at all. Anything I’ve been putting off for a while begins to feel urgent. A year ago, I had to travel for work in early February and the night before I left, I thought I should probably just do my taxes.

This morning, after dropping off a cardigan to have a button sewn back on (another useless errand– I don’t need the sweater any time soon and it could have simply remained button-less indefinitely), I found myself thinking about melanoma. I should really call a dermatologist and get checked for skin cancer, I thought to myself. It’s not completely nuts, I do have fair skin and sunburn easily, but I know the thought only came up now because I’m in the midst of my ridiculous pre-travel freak out. I don’t even have a dermatologist.

At least at this point in my life, I know this is my downfall and I catch myself falling into Absurdistan. I don’t actually start my taxes two months early or contact a dermatologist.

This time around, I’m trying to teach myself a new pre-travel habit: to prepare for a vacation by starting the vacation early. Instead of feeding into my impulse to do more, I’m purposefully trying to do less. I’m reading the newspaper instead of reading online shoe reviews. I’m going out to lunch this week, rather than using my lunch breaks to pick up toothpaste and other last minute “necessities”.

We aren’t going to the wilderness after all. Anything I need, I can buy when we get there. But peace of mind can’t be bought in any store and there are no online reviews. I know I have it somewhere, I just need to find it.

People Come, Seasons Go

April has been the Month of House Guests. We had family staying with us last week; a few days later, our friends and their 2 year old arrived.

Our one-bedroom apartment is fairly spacious for the two of us, but having more people here shows us how small it really is. No one can really do as they please. If one person has work to do, everyone has to quiet down. If our friend’s toddler was awake, everyone in the building was likely awake. (He liked to yell “Where ARE you?” as if there were numerous rooms we could be hiding in).

You think you know your friends and family so well – until they’re in your space morning, noon and night. Then you see firsthand how they live and how they travel. My sister, after living in a New York City apartment, keeps her belongings neatly in one corner of our living room. Our friends and their toddler? Not so much.

My sister is also used to apartment living, so she gets that there are people living above and below us without us having to point it out. Guests who are used to living in a house bring a sense of total freedom to do as they like — a luxury that feels so foreign to us after years of City living. We gently remind them of our neighbors, but we usually still end up cringing at each shouted response and wincing as the front door slams shut.

But there were also moments living with our friends and family that were surprisingly sweet and communal. I liked making tea for our friends each night or reading to their son when they were too tired. And they made coffee for me one morning, when Mr. WholeHog, my usual morning coffee maker, had an appointment.

I try to appreciate these crazy times, when we packed 5 people in our one bedroom apartment and drove our neighbors crazy, because there will likely come a time when we will live somewhere better set up for guests, a house, perhaps, with an extra room set up just for guests and a second bathroom.

We Could Slip Away, Wouldn’t That be Better

One of the best things to do after getting engaged may be to leave the country.

A few weeks after announcing our engagement, we bought plane tickets for a long awaited trip to Italy. Every year, we talk about going to Italy. Every Fall, we say, “Let’s go to Italy next Spring!” and each Spring, we say, “You know Fall is really the better time to travel”. And the result is that we never actually go.

Part of the problem was that Italy offered too much to do, see and eat. How does one narrow down where to go when there’s Rome, Venice and Florence to choose from.

Those three cities are just the beginning. There’s also Naples, where Mr. WholeHog’s grandmother is from, and as big fans of Neapolitan-style pizza, going on an Italian pizza tour was certainly tempting. Reading Heat of course meant that now we had to go to Dario Cecchini’s butcher store in Tuscany. Friends returned from a trip to the Cinque Terre, raving about the coast of Liguria; others touted Bologna as the place to eat in Italy. It felt like we’d need a month’s worth of vacation time, since we aren’t the kind of travelers who feel like 2-3 days in a given place is enough time to really get a feel for it.

Unable to choose where to go in Italy, we simply put the decision off. But this year, we took action. We set out dates, bought a guidebook (or four), and found flights. Considering the sorry state of the US dollar and the meager vacation time my company initially provides, the last few years of indecision have actually been a boon: we’ve saved up enough money to go and hoarded my vacation days so that we can take a full 2 weeks (and still have time for my family’s annual stay in Tahoe).

The timing turned out to be fortuitous because Italy offers the perfect answer to pestering questions about a wedding. We simply say, “We’re really focused on getting to Italy right now”.

It’s the truth. Travel planning is daunting for us – perhaps just as daunting as planning a wedding. We can focus on the wedding, if we want to, on the 14 hour flight to Italy. There’s plenty of time.

One thing we already know about our wedding is that it will be untraditional and in a way, this trip is another unconventional step: it’s like going on our honeymoon first.